OF Death
by Mark Meredith
Summary: Out under the blazing sun wearing pants; woolen socks; no cap to shade my eyes; I can't take my jacket off, because I couldn't find a shirt to put on underneath; I'm sitting in a hot postal vehicle half the time; I skipped breakfast to be on time; no thing to eat or drink all morning; oh, I have 1.75 that I could easily buy something with, but I knew that if I saved it I could.


Approximate Words Counted 2,700

2013:

Disposable Copy

CHEERS, AN ABSTRACTION OF Death

by

Mark Meredith

Apprx. Words Cnt; 1,500

2013:

Disposable Copy

PROLOGUE

by

Mark Meredith

Pro*logue: n 1. A prologue is a preliminary discourse, a preface, or introductory part of a discourse, a poem, or novel.

**out under the blazing sun wearing pants; woolen socks; no cap to shade my eyes; I can't take my jacket off, because I couldn't find a shirt to put on underneath; I'm sitting in a hot postal vehicle half the time; I skipped breakfast to be on time; no thing to eat or drink all morning; oh, I have $1.75 that I could easily buy something with, but I knew that if I saved it I could have a beer with my best friend Norm during my lunch break. **

Norm obnoxiously replied, **hey Cliff Claven, I have an idea. Why don't you depress us with your problems?**

Cliff Claven didn't say anything, which was a rare thing. Cliff's guilt tripping wasn't working. To show Norm that his will couldn't be crushed Cliff said, **well, at least I have $1.75 for a nice, cool beer. The first sip of the day was always the best: **he seemed almost to gloat as he reached down into his right hand pants pocket trying to look as cool as he can: then his left hand pocket, then his back pockets, then he panicked.

**My money! It's gone!** He cried. "I knew something like this would happen! I bet I left it at home when I rushed out!" his words fell hoarsely from his gritty, dry throat, as he stared straight out at nothing looking like a puppy-dog going into shock.

Cliff was nervously twitching.

**Y'know, if one thinks of it that's pretty depressing.** Norm said taking a swig of his half-empty mug of beer right in front of him, "Hey Woody, I'm almost done with this beer can you get me another?" Cliff just sat there staring at Norm's beer, and upon finishing it Norm looked over: and said, **y'know what? You sort of look like Jesus does on the cross when you stare at my beer like that: except for that thing of drool on your chin.**

Cliff dropped his head down the bar, pounding his fist in desperation. Woody came over with a mug of beer.

"Here you go Mr. Peterson." he said, and set the mug down for Norm. Cliff hearing this lifted his head to stare at the beer before him. His eyes wide with surprise he had an idea.

**Maybe Norm will share his beer with me.** Cliff thought as he watched Norm's (Pronounced drafft) draught pulled up for a swig. Cliff had an expression of hopefulness on his face as he licked his lips. Cliff asked, **Norm?**

"Hmm?" said Norm, backwashing,

**Nothing.** Said Cliff. He puts his head back down.

Norm chuckled to himself: ": Works every time."

Cliff felt hopelessness swell up inside and he sighed against the hard, polished bar-top below him. **Y'know Norm, sometimes I feel like there's nobody on Earth that loves me.** Cliff said, feeling sorry for himself Norm was the only person on that side of the bar; Woody at the other side of the bar, Sam was in the back, Carla doing drinks. For a few seconds Norm thought that Cliff would get the message and actually stop talking, but Norm quickly remembered whom he was dealing with, and what was coming.

As if on cue Cliff started on another long speech, **sometimes I just cannot stop thinking about how I always lose the love I need so desperately in my life. Wendy Beauman dumped me in high school, because she couldn't accept me the way that I was; Sally Tortellini was too much of a swinger to consider a serious relationship with me, so we broke it off; Sharon O'Hare was in love with me and everything was perfect; but she lived too far away for anything serious to happen. We tried to keep in touch, but we drifted away from each other; Margaret moved to Canada; Sally didn't want to settle down with one man; and you know-who was only using me. These remembering these failures repeatedly and they haunt my mind: I feel like I have nothing.**

Norm brought the three quarters full beer mug down from his lips, and said, Look on the bright side: at least you have a good memory.

Sam, who had just come from the back room, walked behind the bar. **Norm, Norm easy there**: he said: **don't be so hard on Cliff; he's feeling bad. Y'know Cliff, what you need is good old-fashioned talk with a professional bartender; you can always talk to me without fear of being interrupted. Go ahead; try me.**

Cliff lifted his head, paused, and said, **well, sometimes I wonder: why am I here?**

Carla swoops in, "Sometimes I wonder why you're here, too." she said, putting a tray of dirty glasses on the bar. "I mean, what happened? Was God feeling a little abstract after creating the platypus, or what?" Carla wondered. Cliff's head suddenly felt very heavy. He put it down on the bar again, wanting Norm to feel sorry for him, too.

**I have so many things wrong with my life, and I never seem to fix them; even tough I try my hardest to. I've been in a depressing rut all of my life. I feel like one of these days I'm going to walk into this bar, and realize that I've become a feeble old man. My life will have passed me by. Then I'll live in guilt that I truly am a failure, and quietly live this way without even the right to try anymore, day after day for the rest of my life.** Cliff said pouring his heart out.

Norm put down his mug gently and said, "You think that's bad, I'll probably still be here listening to you whine about it every day for the rest of my life: thank God my drinking takes off ten years of it!"

Sam put his hand to his forehead. "Aw, c'mon now, here. You can't sit here all day with your face down on the bar there." Sam said.

Cliff straightened his back and looked at Sam: said, "Why because Carla isn't worth feeling bad over, and I should look on the bright side?"

Sam scratched his chin, and said, **no, because you'll get a red spot where your forehead's been touching the bar, chicks don't really go for that.**

Cliff, looking down, mumbled aloud, **I guess I should listen to my own advice for once, and look at the bright side. At least I have a 15-minute break to tell my problems to Sam in.** A beeping sound interrupted, and Cliff looked down at his watch in disbelief. "What? It's 1:15 already?!" he blubbered, and jumped off his stool to pick up his mail bag.

Sam said, **hey man,** **I'm sorry about this, why don't you come around after your route and we'll try this again?**

Cliff with a mad look on his face, turned off his watch at the door and said, **oh yeah, sure, I'll be there, unless God decides to shoot a lightning bolt up my ass.**

Norm said, **come on, Cliff. Don't be stupid.** As if Cliff was just a baby about all of this. Cliff felt as if he had been struck. His feelings never meant anything to them. They could push him around as long as it was in joke, but the second he did the same thing they would cut him down to size, and cut him low they would.

Friendship with these people was like a one-way street, and it was always heading in their direction. Cliff took out a bottle of pills and took out a couple of stimulant pills to keep him going in the exhausting sun. Like a grounded child, Cliff wished. That they could see how sorry they would be after seeing his limp body lying before them after running to see him because they had been told that **Cliff has had a heart attack** Cliff then opened the door, walked up the stairs, passed the sign that said **Cheers est. 1895**, and walked up the sidewalk to run some errands.

Little did he know that he would get his wish. Cliff will face the abstraction of death.

- - -30- - -

Approximate Words Counted 1,300

2013:

Disposable Copy

CHAPTER THREE

by

Mark Walt Meredith

The bar remained silent, except for the few that sat at the tables in the far corners of the bar. Those newcomers that who didn't know Cliff Claven nor the regular customers gossiped about the man who had a heart attack in the restaurant upstairs. The stairs that led from the inside of the bar upstairs was crowded with people near the top. Woody was still at the bar, because Sam told him to stay and watch the cash register. The low level of murmuring prevailed for a while, the still silence seemed to overcome the murmuring in the room for what seemed to be too long, until the sound of and the sight of feet breaking through the _crowd_ and coming down the stairs broke the silence and the fear of the inevitable and brought some hope as to what the latest news was.

"'Scuse me, pardon me. Comin' through, here"! came a male voice as the feet made their way through the crowd of legs and down the stairs. The feet of a crowd of an odd number of others followed. It was Sam, leading a group of bar regulars carrying the limp body of Mr. Claven. They descended the bottom of the stairs and turned as Sam directed them behind the bar area towards his office. "Come this way". he said.

Meredith-2 'TER THREE

Woody called out, "Sam"! anticipating good news, "You brought Mr. Claven's body down here"?

Yeah, we sort of got confused as to what to do, and nobody up there knew any First Aid, so we thought we'd bring him down here where it's less crowded so he could breathe.

Woody said, **isn't that dangerous? I heard that you're not supposed to move an injured person because he might have broken his neck or his back when he fell, and jarring him about may paralyze him worse.**

**Oh shit**, he said. Suddenly one of the people got nervous, scared: and dropped Mr. Claven's top half. His head clunked on the tile floor below him.

Sam yelled out at this stupidity, "My God! This is a human being! You don't drop him like that! How insensitive could you be"?!

"Sorry." Norm said.

Sam reclaimed his composure; he was going to need it. **Ah: we've already brought him down here and dropped his head on the ground, it won't hurt if we carry him to my office.** Norm, pick him up back up. Sam went over to and opened his office door for them, as Woody solemnly watched them from behind the bar. After they all eased clear of the door Sam went to close the door. A woman who nobody knew nearly slipped into his office. Sam, blocking her way, said Whoa, there, I'm sorry Miss, but we brought him down here to get away from the crowd. We're only letting people he knows in there.

She said, "Oh, but I do know him".

Meredith-3 CHA,

Sam looked some sort of confused, "Ah: I don't recall him mentioning that he had any lady friends." he said. She was _beautiful_ Sam couldn't believe it.

She tilted her head slightly, "Um, well, actually, I first met him just five minutes ago. I was: I was walking into it, when he ran up to me. He started telling me that it was a well known fact that people shouldn't travel through deserted alleys."

Sam nodded, "That's Mr. Claven, alright".

Melanie continued, "Next thing we knew, some man jumped out from behind the dumpster with a gun. We just didn't do anything. He said, Give me all your money or I'll shoot! Though, I was too scared to move. So was Mr. Claven, but he managed to move between me and the gunman to protect me. He shook the gun at us and repeated that he was going to shoot us. He said, 'Move': I couldn't move, and I just sat there watching Mr. Claven. He was just frozen before me, for what seemed like forever. He said it one last time, **you move out of the way or I'll shoot! I mean it!** He started panting steadily faster, and so was Mr. Claven, his breathing was getting ragged. He was a kid. I guess the mugger was almost **as** afraid of shooting as Mr. Claven was of dying: that's when Mr. Claven gasped and fell to the ground. Almost wasn't enough and, Mr. Claven was dead. The kid stood there looking at him, and then he looked at me. He ran, as if the gates of Hell were opening wide behind him. There was a crowd forming that brought him upstairs. That's why he ran. He found out he couldn't pull the trigger, and I found out that Mr. Claven was the some sort of person who wouldn't have moved in that situation for anything less than death itself. He gave his life for me." her glistening eyes staring at nothing moved over to Sam's eyes.

Moreover, Sam could only say, **wow.** He had no idea that Mr. Claven had it in him. The silence was interrupted by a knock on the office door.

The door creaked open a bit and Woody peeked his head into the office. "Um: Sam: can someone else watch the bar now: I want to see how Mr. Claven is". he said, with a worried look on his face.

Sam motioned his hand, signaling Woody to come in, and said, "Yeah, come in Woody. Norm, go out and watch the cash register, and while you're at it: find someone at the bar to go upstairs and tell the ambulance medics to come down here when they arrive". Sam ordered: with a look of grim repression on his face. Woody came in.

Meredith-4 CHAPT'

"It's alright, Sammy: I will". Norm said grimly looking back at Cliff once before he left, over his shoulder: at the door.

"All right everybody". Sam caught the attention of the group in the room and said, Listen, it turns out Melanie here was there when Mr. Claven collapsed, it turns out that he was mugged at gun-point, I guess he was so scared the shock must have done his heart in and it gave him a heart attack. You guys, you can stop looking for his pulse now, and we have the information we need now. Therefore, if there's no more questions we should clear the room so that we won't be in the way of the medics when they come in here.

Woody raised his hand, **um: Sam I still have a question.**

Sam stopped for a second, truly daunted, **well, what is it Woody?**

He looked at Melanie, **you were with him when he was mugged: right?** Woody said to her.

"Yes". she replied.

"The person who mugged you, was it one of those ex-sitcom kids"? Woody looked to Melanie for his answer, while she didn't know what to say.

Sam raised his hand to quiet Woody**, now I don't think that's our biggest problem now. Sam started moving towards the door.**

Meredith-5 CHA'

Woody looked at Sam, and said, **maybe you don't think so now, but you'll probably think differently, when you're being robbed by Skippy from ****Family Ties****,**

- - -30- - -


End file.
